Eye of the Storm (10 page)

I flip through the weather text, but in my mind, I'm turning pages in the poetry book on my nightstand, and I remember that one, “Geometry.”

. . . the house expands:
the windows jerk free to hover near the ceiling,
the ceiling floats away with a sigh.

I stare up at the library ceiling, gleaming golden wood with dark brown knots, and I imagine it lifting up, up over our heads and drifting off. The idea of solving a problem, feeling everything open up with possibility and with more problems to solve, too, fills me like a kite filling with wind.

Alex's shoulder brushes mine, and I jump.

“Sorry, I was looking at what you were reading.” He nods down at the book. “You finding anything good?”

“Not yet. Just thinking.”

“Me, too.”

He lowers his head, and I watch him swiping through pages and pages of numbers, numbers that should have been the magic formula to make the winds stop blowing, to keep the weathervane on his family's barn where it belongs, to let Newton chase groundhogs in the afternoon. But the deeper his frown gets, the more I start
to believe there will never be a magic formula to make everything okay.

“It's about time to call it a day, kids.” Ms. Walpole steps up to our table, a stack of books in her arms. She smells like the vanilla candles my mom likes. “Did you find everything?”

“Not exactly.” Alex tips back in his chair and sighs.

“Put your chair down. You'll crack your head open,” she says. When his chair legs are back on the ground, she nods. “Now, what is it that you need?”

“Data,” Alex and I say together, and that makes us laugh a little, even though it's been a frustrating afternoon.

“Solid tornado formation data that will work in a simulation,” Alex adds. “Nothing you can help with, unfortunately.”

Ms. Walpole frowns and puts down her pile of books. “The data you have isn't working?” she asks.

Alex shakes his head. “Nope. Even though it should.”

“You've checked it and rechecked it?” She clicks her tongue against the roof of her mouth.

“Yep.”

Ms. Walpole raises her eyebrows. “Then that's an easy one. Collect new data.”

Alex lets out half a laugh. “Sure. Do you happen to know where there's a high-tech weather balloon or something we can borrow?”

She crosses her arms in front of her and looks over her glasses at us. “As a matter of fact, I do.”

“This wasn't on our orientation tour,” I say as Ms. Walpole unlocks the warehouse tucked behind the Sim Dome. It's such an unremarkable building—dull aluminum paneling, nestled among all the shiny steel and glass—that I didn't even notice when we walked past it before.

“Hmph.” She presses her finger to a biometric panel alongside a garage door, and it slides open. “That's because Van Gardner's so caught up in his shiny new toys that he forgets everything else.”

We step inside a room that's bigger than any airplane hangar—huge and basic.

“This place is simply to hold equipment—acres and acres of equipment that somebody thought was too old to keep using,” Ms. Walpole says as we start down one of the long rows of floor-to-ceiling storage racks, and right away, I can see that people here have strange ideas about what's old.

There's a whole fleet of four-wheel-drive vehicles that look like they've been converted from gasoline to hydrogen, each one
outfitted with some fancy gizmo on top. “What's sticking up from the trucks?” I ask.

“That's a mobile meso-net unit—a multipurpose measuring machine made up of steel rods and twirling computer weather sensors that record things like barometric pressure and wind speed,” Ms. Walpole says.

I nod; I read about them in one of Dad's old journals. In the early days of tornado research, scientists used to drive these things close to the storms and drop off probes in the path, hoping for a direct hit. They wanted to see inside the heart of the tornado. That's how they learned a lot about storm formation, how vertical wind shear can turn an ordinary thunderstorm into something stronger.

“And they don't use these anymore?”

“Oh, they still use them. They just have better ones now.” Ms. Walpole leads us around a corner and down another long row of shelves. These are loaded with computers that can't be more than a year or two old—not state of the art like the ones in the Sim Dome, but still plenty powerful.

“Hey,” Alex says. “Aren't these the ones from the camp lab last summer?”

Ms. Walpole nods. “They've been replaced. They may bring these out for the Tomorrow Kids program we run during school vacations.”

“Is that for younger kids?” I ask.

Alex nods. “It's open to anybody, and really, they just do fun stuff, but they're always looking for future campers. That's how I got in; two weeks after my first vacation camp, they invited my folks to get me tested. Tomas, too.”

“If they'd only known what they were getting into.” Ms. Walpole smiles. “How's Mrs. Hazen doing, have you heard?”

“Not that good. Tomas doesn't like to talk about it.” Alex shrugs. “She needs to go to New York or somewhere for treatment.”

Ms. Walpole nods. “I thought I heard him say something like that to Van this week. I hope they're not thinking of giving up the farm.”

“They're not,” Alex says quickly, and I bite my lip to keep from telling him what Risha said.

“Right down here,” Ms. Walpole says. At the far end of the warehouse there's a tall rack filled with bins of rain gear, and one of the old National Weather Service trucks is parked behind it. In the back of the pickup is a sleek model airplane with a five- or six-foot wingspan.

Alex's eyes get huge. I step closer and see this is no toy; it's one of the original DataDrones—the indestructible, remote-operated planes that helped scientists make some of their first real breakthroughs in figuring out how tornadoes are born.

Alex runs his hand along one of the wings. “Graphene, right?”

Ms. Walpole nods. “It was the strongest substance in the world when this was developed.”

And it wasn't that long ago. Five or six years, maybe? I remember Dad talking about how amazing the drones were. “They're not using it anymore?” I ask.

“This showed up a few weeks ago,” Ms. Walpole says. “I guess the new ones have more efficient radar built in.”

Alex reaches into the back of the truck and picks up the
remote-control device that must run the plane. It has regular remote buttons and levers with some kind of computer screen below them. “So . . .” He sounds like he's trying not to get too excited, but his eyes give him away. “This still works?”

Ms. Walpole gives a sharp nod. “I'm sure it does. Contrary to popular opinion around this place, just because something is a little older doesn't mean it's not useful.” She pushes her glasses up on her nose.

Alex looks down at the control panel in his hands. “Can we . . . uh . . . borrow it?”

“Well, it's not doing anyone any good sitting in the back of a van, is it?” Behind the glasses, Ms. Walpole's green eyes have a glint of mischief in them, and I smile, imagining Dad trying to negotiate with her. “I'm certainly not going to stop you from making use of the tools you need to carry out your research. I'm here to help, after all.”

“Should we check with Van or something?” I ask.

She purses her lips. “I'm not sure I would recommend that. It's often easier to be forgiven than it is to get permission in situations such as this.” She pauses. “But of course, I never said that.” She looks at her watch, silver and obviously antique. “I'd better get back to the library. I'm afraid I often forget to lock up when I leave a building, so you two will need to do that on your way out, all right?”

Alex grins. “You got it. And thanks.”

She walks briskly back down the aisle, then turns back to us. “You'll want to leave promptly, and use the main entrance. The other
staff members are all in a meeting in the auditorium for another hour. I'd best join them now.”

I can't quite believe what we're about to do, so I just stand, listening to her footsteps fade all the way to the door. It thunks closed, and Alex turns to me. “Ready to borrow an airplane?”

“How long can you stay?” Alex leans against the bottom of the playground slide at the park near campus, frowning down at his DataSlate. A storm is forming west of us, but there's no way to tell yet if it will spawn tornadoes. Just in case, we set up the drone so it's ready to take off from the open space where kids play kickball.

“I can stay a while, I guess.” Dad never mentioned a curfew, and Mirielle usually makes dinner pretty late. “So . . . if we do get a storm, the idea here is to fly the plane into it and gather data so . . .” I was so bowled over by the very idea of “borrowing” a weather drone, so nervous as we carried it silently out the Eye on Tomorrow gate and lugged it here, that I never actually processed what we're trying to do. Gather data about a storm, sure. Then what?

“Well, I figure the numbers I'm using in my project must be off. I tried the simulation with two different storms last summer and got the same results, which means maybe all the storm data in the system at camp is wrong.”

“So if we have a brand new storm . . . and collect our own brand new data . . .” This kind of problem-solving is so different from the
Eye on Tomorrow entrance exam, this starting-from-scratch thinking, but I'm getting it. “Then the simulation should work?”

“Well, hopefully,” Alex says. “Or if not, we'll know the data wasn't the problem and the whole theory's a bust.” He sighs and looks down at the DataSlate. “Oh!” He jumps up and climbs the ladder to the top of the slide, facing west. “I think we're in business. Come up and see!”

There's not much room on the platform at the top of the slide, so we crowd together, and Alex points to the horizon. “See that rotation?”

The rotation I notice first is in my stomach, which is kind of flipping out being so close to him up here, but I force myself to focus on the clouds. “Yeah. That looks like it's going to produce a funnel cloud.”

Before I've finished my sentence, he's climbing down the ladder and heading for the remote control we left by the kickball field. The storm is moving fast; the sky is darkening, and the wind is already picking up. I can't believe we're actually going to fly this thing. It feels too adult-scientist, too serious, too
real
to be happening to a couple of kids at science camp. But Alex hands me the remote.

“Hold this while I check the sensors, okay?”

My hands shake, even though Alex swears he's flown remote control planes before and this is no different. All we have to do is fly it into the storm; once we punch through the wall, the drone will be swept up into the tornado and sensors can gather data. The wireless system is set up to send information directly to my DataSlate, so we'll get readings right away. Then we'll recover the full set of
data from the hard drive when the drone lands. Or crashes. I'm picturing us returning the plane to the storage building in pieces, explaining to Van or, worse, my father, what we were thinking, when Alex shouts, “Press the red button! Now!”

I press it, and the drone's engine hums to life. “I thought you were going to fly it!”

“I want to make sure the sensors are working,” he says, waving over his shoulder at me as he squints down at the plane. “You'll be fine—just start it going forward and then throttle up to lift off, and I'll take over from there!”

Throttle up? The controls feel like some kids' video game in my hand, but I know this is real, with real consequences. If something happens to this plane and we have to—

“Jaden, start it! The storm's coming and if it turns away before we get there, we're not going to make it!”

I force my thumb to push the lever, and the plane jerks forward on the ground.

“Good!” Alex yells. “Good! Now speed up! Go!”

I push the lever all the way forward, and the plane bounces along, speeding up, bumping over the dusty kickball field where second base would be.

“Now throttle up! Now!” Alex shouts as he grabs the DataSlate from the grass and runs to my side.

I press the button to throttle up, and the plane rises off the ground, just missing a shrub at the edge of the park. It wavers, headed for the fence, and I can't imagine how we're going to keep it steady in the wind. “Here!” I shove the controls into Alex's hands,
take my DataSlate, and call up the program that will receive the drone's data.

The page comes up blank but immediately starts filling with numbers. Columns and columns of numbers. Wind speeds. Temperatures. Barometric pressures. They're mostly the same numbers, over and over, as Alex maneuvers the plane over the fence, outside Placid Meadows and closer to the storm.

The rotation we spotted from the top of the slide is swirling faster, and already a thick, dark rope is forming, stretching down from the cloud. Alex takes his eyes off the plane to watch the storm and lets out a whoop. “We got it!” He sounds like one of those storm chasers on the video, and I wonder if we're as stupid as they were, playing with fire, with something we don't understand.

“Here we go . . . getting close now . . . Watch!” He means to watch the plane or the storm, or maybe the data, but I watch Alex, his eyes as intense as anyone's I've ever seen. He bites his lip in concentration, and the tendons in his hands tense as he clutches the remote and drives the plane full throttle—faster, faster, faster—until it surges through the gray wall of wind into the heart of the storm.

“It's in! Watch the data, Jaden! What are we getting?”

I look down at the numbers flying over the screen in my hands. Flying faster than the wind, but my eyes start to see patterns. Changes. Wind speeds rising. Temperatures rising. Barometric pressure dropping like mad. This is what it's like to be inside a storm.